Dean Harvey, thank you for that warm welcome and, President Frederick, thank you for the kind introduction. And thank you to the students, staff and faculty for being excellent hosts. To the best of our... Show More + knowledge, this is the first time that a president of the World Bank Group has addressed the Howard community. I am grateful to everyone here who made this opportunity possible.In preparing for this speech, we did some research on Howard’s history. I was impressed with what we found. I am honored to be at an institution once led by James Nabrit, one of the leading constitutional and civil rights lawyers of his generation; and I am humbled to be at a place that helped shape the thinking of Pauli Murray, a courageous feminist trailblazer and thinker. Over varied and highly accomplished careers, both Nabrit and Murray worked to make the world a more just place. At the Bank, we are driven by the same aspiration.Over the last two years, I have led an effort at the World Bank Group to reorgan Show Less -

Thank you, Michelle, for that kind introduction, and thanks also to our host, the Council on Foreign Relations, for inviting me today to deliver the David A. Morse Lecture. I am honored to be here and... Show More + I’d like to use this opportunity to talk about some fundamental issues in global development and the World Bank Group’s role in helping countries and the private sector meet those great challenges ahead.For a very long time, the rich have known to some extent how the poor around the world live. What’s new in today's world is that the best-kept secret from the poor, namely, how the rich live, is now out. Through the village television, the Internet and hand-held instruments, which a rapidly increasing number of the poor possess, life-styles of the rich and the middle class -- about which they earlier had only foggy ideas -- are transmitted in full color to their homes every day. And that has made all the difference.The political turbulence we’re seeing all around the world has varied proxi Show Less -

Thank you, Dr. Komatra for the kind introduction. I would also like to thank Professor Vicharn and the PMAC Secretariat for all your hard work in organizing the conference; the Royal Thai Government for... Show More + their hospitality; Professor Rachata; Lincoln Chen and our fellow conference co-hosts and partners in JICA, USAID, WHO and the Rockefeller Foundation; and to my good friends, Dr. Suwit and Paul Farmer.Yesterday I was honored to share the Prince Mahidol award with a distinguished group of individuals who have spent many years fighting to end the HIV-AIDS epidemic. I accepted the award on behalf of a broad and diverse group of advocates who worked as part of a global movement to make treatment accessible to people everywhere, no matter their income or geography.Sadly, our work is unfinished. Millions are still becoming infected each year, and many are shut out of treatment because of inadequate services and frankly, discrimination. Yet a new generation of activists has joined the fight, a Show Less -

Thank you, Steve, and good morning everyone. I want to thank CSIS for taking on the ambitious topic of universal health care for emerging economies. There is strong evidence that investments in people... Show More + -- like health care, education and social protection -- are not just good for the individuals who directly benefit, they’re also good for their countries’ growth and political stability. Likewise, I believe not providing health, education, and social protection is fundamentally unjust -- in addition to being a bad economic and political strategy.Yet some say our agenda for universal health coverage is too ambitious, too complex, and too costly for high-income countries, let alone for emerging economies.We’ve heard that argument many times before. My first year of medical school was when we first understood the devastation of the AIDS virus. And in a remarkably short period of time, we developed effective treatments.But when we thought about bringing those treatments to the Show Less -

“Ending AIDS and Poverty”Your Excellencies and honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues and friends,As we look back on the history of this epidemic, it is hard to say that there is any one... Show More + moment when the tide began to turn. Because the truth is that we have been turning back the tide of AIDS, step by painful step, for 30 years.And at nearly every turn, it is the activists, and their communities, that have led the way.It was activists and communities who devised safer sex, promoted condom use, needle exchange and virtually all the behavioral prevention we use today.It was activists who transformed drug development and regulatory processes, and involved patients in clinical research, cutting drug approval times in half in the global north.It was activists in Durban in 2000 who began to push for access to antiretrovirals in the developing world and who kept pushing and are pushing still for them to be affordable and available to everyone who needs them, everywhere.And it wa Show Less -